Oil Change Intervals

[rbeales]

Dealers are giving conflicting info as to whether an intermediate oil change is needed for the 2003 Amazon 4.2L TD engine (at 4500 miles or 6 months).

Can anyone answer this definitively for my vehicle which is predominantly used on road in UK, and does not tow?

Richard Beales

[FurrTrap]

>Dealers are giving conflicting info as to whether an intermediate oil change is needed for the 2003 Amazon 4.2L TD engine (at 4500 miles or 6 months).

I have the 1995 Amazon 4.2L TD, and there is conflicting advice:

1 The garage that sold me the car recommended an oil change every 6000 miles. (4WD specialist).

2 My local Toyota garage performs service intervals at 6000,9000,27000 miles.

3 The Haynes diesel manual (92751) recommends an oil and oil filter change every 3 months or 5000km/3100mi whichever comes first.

Infrequent oil changes can do a lot of harm to the engine, so erring on the side of caution I've adopted the 3 month interval as my mileage is consistently lower than the threshold.

Regards,

Jamie

[rbeales]

Jamie

Many thanks for the reply - I'll probably now opt for every 4500 miles / 6 months as a reasonable average of both our sets of info.

Richard

[sankul]

Here in Nairobi, Toyota Kenya reccomend an oil change evry 5000 kms; perhaps beacuse our roads are so bad...

[FurrTrap]

I'll probably be moving to a fully synthetic oil in the near future. General opinion seems to be that you can run for twice the mileage, get improved fuel economy as well, which offsets the higher price of the oil.

Regards,

Jamie